


in the darkest night hour, i’ll search through the crowd

by HopeNight



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 15:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2513309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeNight/pseuds/HopeNight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's a story for you.</p><p>Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes struggle and deal with memory and knowledge.</p><p>Eventually though, there is only one choice.</p><p>There is no other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the darkest night hour, i’ll search through the crowd

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Beyonce's "XO" because I've been listening to it on repeat.
> 
> The Stucky is not explicit but heavily implied. It's also the first time I have written Steve/Bucky. So I hope I didn't screw up anything too badly.
> 
> This is also un-beta'd like all of my work. I proofread as much as I can, but this is a solo operation folks.

Here’s a story for you. 

There’s a pair of sisters named Knowledge and Memory. They are happy together, content with their lives. Sometimes they fight, but for the most part, they are in agreement. Memory gives Knowledge context, she advises Knowledge on how to apply herself to certain situations. Knowledge drags Memory out of the past before she repeats it again and again. 

They are happy together because Knowledge and Memory make each other whole. 

Then, one night, someone comes and takes one of the sisters. 

The other is left to ruin without her sister. 

So… 

Which one is which? 

Steve remembers a lot of things. The serum had changed a lot. One of those things was just how well he remembers: how vividly he can recall. Oh sure, some things remain indistinct and hazy, but most? Most it’s scary how clear they are. 

He remembers the light on his mother’s hair as she pinned it back for work. He remembers how it shone like corn silk: pale yellow and pretty. He remembers her light blue eyes and the smell of soap and antiseptic. 

He remembers the Commandos. He remembers the cadence of Falsworth’s voice and the smell of Earl Grey that he somehow seemed to have procured. He remembers how Gabe would mime playing the trumpet and the smell of tobacco from the Army issued cigarettes. He remembers Dugan’s loud boisterous laughter ringing through bars and the smell of exhaust from whatever HYDRA vehicle he stole that time. He remembers Dernier’s wicked smile and how his eyes lit up as he worked on his explosives. He remembers how Morita would smile a bit and how ink would stain his fingers from writing a letter to his girl.

He remembers Howard: the twist of his mouth, the smell of his booze, and the way he would run a comb through his hair. Steve remembers precision and slightly singed clothing from experiments. 

He remembers Peggy: how her hair shone under the lights, the velvet red of her lips, and the crispness of her accent. He remembers her hands and wondering if they were soft. He remembers the impression of her: tough and unyielding. 

There is no saying that he remembers Bucky. 

It goes without him saying it.

He knows Bucky like he knows his own _soul_. Bucky is a part of him. Bucky would never not be on his mind. His last thought was _See ya soon, Buck._  

He remembers the cold engulfing his body. 

He remembers the cold engulfing his body. 

The asset does not know who he is. How can a weapon have a past? The asset does not remember many things. These things, he is told, are inconsequential to his mission. 

He remembers the cold engulfing his body. He remembers how it seeped into his bones. He is told, many times, of his nickname: the Winter Soldier. It is, as if, somehow, the ice and cold that he remembers has somehow become one with him. 

The asset is the Winter Soldier. 

It matters little to him. 

People name their weapons. As if a weapon has any real need for a name, a weapon, like the asset, causes its destruction all the same: name or no name. 

The asset does, however, know things. 

He knows how to kill. 

He knows the way to cut across an artery to prolong a death or make it quick. He knows the correct poison to use to make it appear as if someone has died in their sleep. He also knows the poison to make a person suffer in torment for months, begging for death’s sweet release. He knows how to assemble, disassemble, and reassemble a variety of guns. He knows how to smuggle. He knows how to spin the knife in the right way. He knows how to use piano wire hidden inside of a scarf to hide the garroting of a target. 

He knows this. He knows the mission. He knows the killing. He knows the bloodshed and how a person’s eyes cloud over in death. 

He knows nothing but this. 

Except… 

The asset knows the man on the bridge. 

The asset does not know how he knows the man on the bridge. He does not know what to do with this familiarity that seems to claw through him. It frightens him. The asset does not know how to deal with this emotion. 

A weapon should never know fear. A weapon is indifferent to the intent of those who wield it. A weapon should not _know_ someone like the asset knows the man on the bridge.

It is the first time that the asset wishes for the cold. When he sees the man on the bridge’s, the target's, warm blue eyes stare _at him_. The man on the bridge stares at the asset like he is not looking _through_ him. 

It is…disquieting to the asset. 

People always look through him. He is a weapon. Weapons have a singular purpose. They are tools, nothing more and nothing less. They are looked through because they are just metal and forgery. Weapons are things that are put away for years and brought out when it becomes convenient. 

Then the man on the bridge does something that the asset had never expected him to do. 

The man on the bridge looks _at_ the asset and _recognizes_ the asset: not as a weapon but as a man. 

“Bucky?” gasps the man on the bridge in shock. 

The asset is shaken. Something, something, in the back of his head seems to struggle through the cold he knows well, through the killing he knows. He can feel it wriggle like worms in his brain. 

This is not a name like the Winter Soldier is named. It is not a name of a weapon. It is the name of _person_. 

“Who the hell is Bucky?” the asset asks. 

The man on the bridge looks devastated. 

He fails. 

He fails.

Steve has failed. He succeeded in exposing HYDRA. He succeeded in pulling up the roots. He hopes and prays that this time he has exposed HYDRA’S heart. 

Cut a head and two more grow is all well and good in a twisted way. But what happens when you cut out the heart? 

Steve hopes that they will find out that you kill it.

He failed though in getting Bucky. He failed in reaching his best friend. He failed in stirring something in him. 

Or maybe he did stir. 

Maybe he failed in getting Bucky to trust him. 

Maybe that’s what hurts the most. 

He keeps failing Bucky. He failed Bucky so many times why would he trust him at all? 

Steve remembers being weak and sick. He remembers the fights and the anger inside of him, simmering under the surface. He remembers his body, where he could count his ribs some days. He remembers Bucky picking him up from alleyways, chewing him out, and carrying home. 

He remembers blood: the taste of it, the smell of it, the russet color split across dirt alleys. He remembers the bruises and how they ached and lasted forever. 

He remembers large hands picking him up. He remembers the explicit and implicit trust in those hands. He remembers a gentle sigh and an accented voice, “Geez Stevie what am I gonna do wit’ ya, pal?” 

He remembers Bucky falling. 

He remembers the cold and the ice and how his tears froze to his face. He remembers hanging on and that he never saved Bucky, could never save Bucky. 

But dammit, he is going to try this time. 

He will not fail. 

He will not fail. 

The asset has a mission. It is the first time the asset has picked his own parameters. Yet he remains certain of one thing: HYDRA must be torn to the ground. 

The asset, the weapon, thinks (and how strange is that? To think?) that he enjoys this sort of freedom. Though it comes at price in waking up and knowing more things. He knows more victims he has killed. He knows the bloodied hand he had in shaping the twentieth century. 

The weapon knows what he has been made to do. 

The weapon is gaining sentience. 

(This is the story we all know. The weapon knows what it has been made to do. So what does it do? Turns back on those who have created it and strikes.) 

The asset, though he does not know what he is an asset of, knows this part. He knows how to stalk his targets. He knows how to enter the spaces that they believe is safe. He knows how to wait and how to strike. 

This he knows. 

This is what he focuses on. 

The asset does not know many things. 

Behind the dreams of his kills that wake him up and shake him in the middle of night, he dreams of other things. 

He has flashes of a thin blonde boy with warm eyes. He dreams that he is this boy’s protector because deep in his bones he knows this boy is _special_. 

Both of these dreams wake him up and he is breathless. He reaches for the gun he keeps by him. 

Only one of these dreams leaves him cold and aching. 

He pushes it aside. 

He has work to do. 

He has work to do. 

Steve always has work to do. This time though? This time it is important. 

Not that it wasn’t important in the past because the work was important.  This is an importance to a man, not a symbol. 

Steve Rogers remembers who Steve Rogers is. He remembers what Captain America was meant to be: a fictional rallying cry for the people at home. False hope for the better tomorrow they were promised. 

He remembers when World War II was supposed to be the war to end all wars. 

Most people seem to have forgotten that even Captain America, a symbol, was once a man. Captain America was created from Steve Rogers. 

Steve Rogers, deep in his heart, is still a skinny, asthmatic kid from Brooklyn: who talked too loud, argued with his teachers, and had a stubborn streak a mile wide and just as deep. The only thing that stubborn streak could even hope to match was how much he cared about Bucky Barnes. 

This is his work. 

He razes to the ground whatever HYDRA operations he can with Sam and sometimes Natasha or Fury. He spends most of his time dedicated to finding Bucky. 

He functions on these memories of the dead eyed man, of the man who broke when confronted with caring, of a metal hand glinting through the water of the Potomac. 

He remembers Bucky. He remembers the Soldier. 

Steve does know they are not the same man. 

But Steve also knows that he is not the same man either. 

It’s been seventy years and two years and a few months, all at the same time, since he last saw Bucky. Steve knows because he has counted. 

He will take whatever kind of man Bucky is. He can be Bucky or James or the Soldier or whatever he wants. But there is one thing that he knows: true and absolute. 

He belongs at Bucky’s side. 

He will find him. 

He will find him. 

The asset… 

The Soldier… 

Bu-Bucky will find him. He doesn’t know when or where or how, but he will. 

He burns HYDRA to the ground where he can find it. Because those bastards deserve it. He knows pain and cold and destruction. He knows how to kill. He knows his codename and his name name. 

What he knows is that he is not a weapon but a man. 

And he knows sooner or later that he has to slow down. 

Bucky does not remember a lot of things, but he knows things now. He knows that he was a hero once upon a time. He knows that he was loved once, but he forgets how it feels to be loved. 

He knows that he is a _person_ and not a weapon. 

He knows that this scares him. 

And he knows that he can’t face Steve until he has done his work. Even then, he may never be able to look Steve in the eye knowing what he knows, knowing the blood on his hand. 

Because Bucky knows Steve. He knows that Steve will forgive him. 

He is not sure he can forgive himself. 

So he keeps moving on. 

So he keeps moving on. 

Steve may be more stubborn then a mule. He may not always recognize when something is an exercise in futility. But he can strategize. 

This is more like a tactical retreat then anything else. Sometimes you need to wait and let the person you are looking for find you first. 

Sometimes you just need to be found, rather then finding. 

Sometimes you need to know, rather then remember. 

So this is what Steve Rogers knows. 

He is the Winter Soldier’s mission.

He is part of Bucky Barnes.

This man, whether he be one or the other or an amalgamation of both will come for him.

This he knows.

This he remembers.

He remembers the Cyclone and how he convinced Steve to ride it. He remembers that Steve threw up afterward and that he rubbed his back, whispering apologies. Steve waving them off and how frustrated he looked.

He remembers how Steve’s hair shone under the light like golden straw from half-remembered, broken fairy tales. He remembers the stubborn set of a jaw, the determination written in a slender frame.

He remembers people whispering about how that Rogers boy was gonna get himself killed. He remembers people whispering about how Captain America was going to save them all, whatever that saving was.

He remembers Steve: small, frail, but never weak. He remembers Steve: tall, muscular, and stronger then before.

It is fragmented and disjointed. He remembers faces but not names, names but not faces. Places twist with times. Dance floors split with blood. Dames with fake nylons walk through his assassinations.

Through it all, the one thing is Steve.

Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, the asset knows a lot of things. He is also starting to remember some.

Steve Rogers, Captain America, the hero remembers many things. He is also starting to know more.

They are part of each other: no matter what. They are part of each other.

This cannot be erased. This cannot be forgotten. This cannot be unknown.

It is not hard to find him.

Bucky is tired and his head is in knots. He has done what he can for the moment, but he has a new mission.

Or an old mission.

Steve Rogers has always been his mission. It was HYDRA’s ruin to remind him of it and try to twist it for ill. It can never be twisted. That is what he knows and remembers. It is tattooed on whatever soul Bucky has left and written across his heart. It is hardwired into him.

Steve is making dinner when Bucky knocks on his door.

Bucky can smell it from the hallway and feels his stomach growl. He remembers Steve standing in their small kitchen and trying to make the food stretch.

Steve opens the door and stares at him.

One look into Bucky’s eyes and he knows who it is, who he has been expecting. Yet, he knows this fractured man better then Steve knows himself. Steve knows the Winter Soldier better then he knows what Captain America has become. Bucky is sketched into his bones and whispered across his DNA. 

Steve Rogers knows what to do next.

This is what they know. This is what they remember.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone enjoyed it! 
> 
> Also if you want to drop me a line, fangirl about a variety of topics, or just say hi then you can fangirl with me at my [tumblr](http://hopenight.tumblr.com/). 


End file.
